Meat is murder; well, suicide at least

Why bacon sandwiches are a death sentence and other such revelations.

WHATEVER YOU may choose to do for pleasure, there’s Dr Michael Mosley, stationed in a BBC studio on the other side of the world, waggling a disapproving finger.

In the past, he’s had a go at us for eating too much and exercising too slowly, advocating instead the 5:2 diet and High Intensity Training. He has made shows examining the ill effects of caffeine, salt, sugar and sunbathing.

He’s no fan of smoking and drinking, of course, and a couple of days ago, he popped up on Sky’s BBC Knowledge channel, presenting two back-to-back documentaries about the perils of eating meat.

‘‘Actually, I try to keep fingerwaggling to a minimum,’’ he protests from his London home. ‘‘As a scientist, all I do is evaluate the evidence, rather than pile on any sort of moral judgement. Besides, finger-waggling doesn’t really work with science programmes: most people merely take on board whatever facts support their existing lifestyle and ignore the rest.’’

Quite by chance, I’m talking to Mosley the very same morning a courier pack has arrived on my doorstep from a wild game supplier in Marlborough. Inside: rolled goat shoulder, wild pork sausages, chipolatas made with rabbit, garlic and fennel. Is Mosley suggesting I should bin these things because they’re bad for me?

‘‘Oh, no, on the contrary. Goat’s very lean, because the animal’s been out running around in the wild. Rabbit sausages sound delicious, too, though they probably have a lot more salt, fat and nitrates in them. But not all meat is created equal. I recently visited an enormously depressing feedlot in Texas where they had 50, 000 cows standing around eating a mixture of corn, hormones and antibiotics from concrete troughs. That’s the red meat most Americans eat, and that’s probably why their studies suggest it’s so bad for you.’’

A former psychiatrist, Mosley has become one of the BBC’s goto guys for medical documentaries. Over the past few years, in the interest of science, he has sprinted up and down hills, taken up fasting, ingested moodaltering drugs, infested himself with parasites, been beaten with a ruler while his pain responses were measured, and swallowed a tiny camera so home viewers could take a scenic trip through his murky bowels.

This week’s meat docos launched a new series screening on BBC Knowledge throughout May. Every Wednesday night at 8.30 pm there’ll be a different The Truth About doco in which Mosley and a gang of other boffins give us the lowdown on allergies, the moon, the Dark Web, the brain. In short, we’ll be bombarded with more truth than we know what to do with.

But surely ‘‘truth’’ is a very gnarly concept if you’re a scientist? ‘‘Well yes, that’s, um, true,’’ he says. ‘‘But ‘The Truth About Meat’ sounds good, doesn’t it? If we called it ‘The best we can tell you about meat at the moment from the available information, but this may well change’, it’s a lot clumsier. Really, these shows are all about debunking popular misconceptions, and the misconception in this case was that red meat will put you in an early grave. Really, it’s a lot more complicated than that.’’

Indeed. This week’s show provided opportunities for both vegetarians and carnivores to rejoice. Evidentally the former are considerably more eco- friendly, given all the resources needed to produce every pound of flesh, while the latter, surprisingly, tend to live longer.

‘‘The research suggests eating a few ounces of grass-fed red meat three or four times a week is probably not doing you any harm, and may even do you some good. If you want to eat meat, the thing is to eat less of it, not waste any, and eat more sustainable and unprocessed meats, because the processed stuff really is bad for you.

‘‘For example, we discovered every bacon sandwich knocks about an hour off your life, so I haven’t eaten a lot of bacon sandwiches since then. Really, that’s why I love making these shows. Besides meeting interesting people, travelling widely, sticking my hands up inside cows and so on, I learn a lot of things I can then apply to my own life.’’

This coming Wednesday, Mosley and Professor Alice Roberts go head-to-head on the topic of ‘‘brain sex’’, looking at how gender affects the wiring of our brains.

There’ll be human lab rats, compliant monkeys, illuminating MRI scans for Africa. Mosley promises all manner of stereotypes will be debunked without a single finger waggled. I’ll be watching for sure; what better way to spend that extra hour I just saved by not eating a bacon sarnie?

‘Every bacon sandwich knocks about an hour off your life’